RILEY

With her hand frozen on my jaw, Evie stared at me, though she wasn’t really looking at me. No, she was staring right through me. It was something she used to do all the time—get so lost in her thoughts, so focused, she’d block out everything around her.

I didn’t mind, though.

While she was staring through me, I stared at her. Looking at her now, it was hard to believe I’d ever doubted that it had been her in that picture in the newspaper. Yeah, her hair made her look different, but her face was just the same. Her skin was still pale, the bridge of her small, straight nose dotted with freckles, even more spilling onto her cheeks, which were splotched with color, no doubt from the chill in the air. Gray eyes stared unseeing toward my chin, her full lips parted and so fucking taunting.

Those lips, the lips of a woman—seductive and made for sin—didn’t belong with the rest of her face. She’d always looked so innocent, even with the rainbow array of hair colors she’d sported. That fresh-looking face was what had gotten her so far when she’d been working jobs for Max. She’d had this wide-eyed innocence to her that had allowed her to sucker more than one person. Now, though, with her long, fiery red hair, and a jaded, angry glint to her eyes, she hardly resembled that innocent teenager I’d known.

She blinked and, just like that, she snapped out of the trance she’d been in. She’d paused in her soft, brushing strokes with the washcloth against my skin when she’d zoned out, so she started up again, her eyes flicking up to mine once, then back down to her task.

Her voice was soft when she spoke again. “You remember when I always used to do this for you after one of our jobs? When you’d go off on someone for stepping even a bit out of line?” She glanced up at me, finding my eyes still locked on hers. Clearing her throat, she lowered her gaze again and said, “I always thought it was because you thought you had something to prove with me.”

It had never bothered me before to talk about how far I’d come in the past five years. I’d filled out, finally hit a growth spurt at nineteen and bulked up from working out, and people tended not to mess with me anymore—not that they had then, either, but still. Back then when I’d been scrawnier than everyone else in the crew, smaller, I’d always thought I’d had something to prove. Especially with her. Though I’d never admit that to her in a million fucking years.

“A lot’s changed in five years,” I said. She lifted her eyes to mine, and I could see in her gaze, just as clear as I was sure she could see in mine, that the time away had changed her as well. “I’ve been cleaning up my own shit for a long time now.”

She nodded and lowered her head, setting aside the washcloth and focusing on prepping a cotton ball with some hydrogen peroxide. As she dabbed it on the cut, she asked, “So you’re in still? With the crew?”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes for more than a fleeting second, instead focusing on my mouth and the cut there. I wanted her to look at me so I could get a read on what she was really asking. Evie didn’t do small talk. She dug for information—she always had and always would. I just couldn’t tell if she was hoping my answer would be yes or no.

And I honestly didn’t know how to answer. As of twenty-four hours ago, I’d had a purpose within the crew. Vengeance and justice for the girl I’d loved. In the past few hours, all my reasons had been blown to dust. And the man I worked for, the one for whom I’d executed more jobs than I could count, was after her.

Instead of going into all that, rehashing the questions I hadn’t even begun to really delve into myself, I gave her the simplest answer, nodding stiffly when she finally glanced up at me. And if I hadn’t been studying her so intensely, looking specifically for any kind of reaction, I might’ve missed the brief flash of disappointment that was there in her eyes.

She grabbed a tube of ointment and put some on her finger, then reached up, stopping just before touching my skin and glancing up at me. And then her eyes were focused again on my cut, and the fingers of one hand steadied my chin while her others were brushing against me in a way they hadn’t in so long. It was too much and not enough, and I had to get out of here.

“Riley … I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’d like to tell you what—”

I turned away from her hand, letting it fall by my side. “Doesn’t matter. You did what you had to do. I don’t hold that against you.” I grabbed everything she’d brought out and stood from the stoop. “Let’s head in and talk to Gage, see what the plan is.”

And I hoped to God he had a plan, because I had nothing.

I had no idea what lay in front of us, why the guys in the crew—in my crew—were after her, but if I knew Max, he wasn’t going to stop just because I’d sent one of his guys back a little roughed up. If anything, that was only going to light a bigger fire under him.

Because of that, I knew with utmost certainty that our fight was just beginning.

Chapter Eight

After Evie and I had come in from outside, Madison had taken her to the bedroom to get set up for a bit so she could try and get some rest. I didn’t know when she had last slept, but I was coming up on almost thirty hours, and I was dead on my feet.

I couldn’t sleep yet, though—too much shit to deal with.

While Madison and Evie were in the other room, I sat down at the dining room table across from Gage. His forearms were resting on the battered wood, his head bowed toward the cup of coffee in front of him. He glanced up at me when I sat, and I got a good look at his face for the first time since the fight. He looked worse than I did, since he hadn’t fought back right away. A large, angry-looking purple bruise was blooming on his right cheek and another on his jaw, his bottom lip split near the corner.

I cringed and closed my eyes, rubbing my fingers over them. In all the years we’d been on our own, running the streets and being part of the crew, we’d never gotten into a fistfight. We had our issues, sure, but for the most part, we got along fairly well. He was the only person in my life who’d always been there for me, unconditionally.

Which was why his betrayal stung all the more.

“Sorry about your face,” I said.

Gage snorted and shook his head, leaning back in his chair. “Yeah, sorry about yours, too. I didn’t want to have to fight back, but Madison seems to like my mug how it is and you weren’t stopping, so…” He shrugged.

I reached for the cup in front of me, taking a drink of the still-steaming coffee. Even though the fight had allowed me to get my aggression out, I still had questions. “Why did you do it? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

He was quiet for a few moments, his fingers running along the handle of the coffee cup. Clearing his throat, he looked up at me. “Because I knew you’d go after her—hunt for her and not give up until you found her. And I thought it’d be safer for both of you—I thought it’d be safer for you if you didn’t have the choice.”

I shook my head and tugged at my hair, letting out a frustrated growl. Gage had always only seen me as his kid brother, even though I was only a year younger than him. “Fuck, man, you can’t do that shit. I’m not a little kid anymore. You can’t make decisions for me. It’s the same thing as when you tried to get me to stop running jobs a few months ago. I’m going to do them until I don’t want to do them anymore, period. I’ve been an adult for a long time—a lot longer than just the years since I turned eighteen. You know that better than anyone.”

Gage stared at me for a moment, then gave a short, sharp nod. I knew that’d be the only acknowledgment I’d get from him on it. And even having that didn’t mean that everything would be perfect immediately. But it meant he’d try.